214 



Bird - Lore 



grazing in our pastures and feeding on the 

 insects which they disturb as they graze. 

 Thus, even in their feeding, they make the 

 animals work for them. 



When the females lay their eggs they go 

 to swamps and lay them in the nests of their 

 cousins, the Red-winged and Yellow-headed 

 Blackbirds; or to groves or orchards where 

 they find the dainty nests of the Yellow 

 Warbler, or the nests of other birds smaller 

 than themselves. 



I have never found their eggs beside other 

 than spotted eggs. They seem to be too 



A TWO-STORY NEST 



shrewd to lay them in the nests of birds 

 larger than themselves, or in nests with un- 

 spotted eggs, like those of the Mourning 

 Dove, Robin, or Catbird. 



They are among the worst enemies of our 

 birds, for their eggs hatch more quickly than 

 most other eggs, and their young grow with 

 extraordinary rapidity, taking most of the 

 food and literally crowding the rightful 

 young to the wall of the nest. Sometimes two, 

 three, or even more of these eggs will be 

 found in a single nest. 



The strange fact is that only the little 

 Yellow Warbler seems to understand the 

 danger of these enemy eggs. As I sat watching 

 the little yellow lady in trouble, she kept 



bringing billfulls of thistle-down, but would 

 not even light upon the edge of her nest. 

 Indeed, she seemed to regard her nest as a 

 defiled thing because the enemy egg lay 

 beside her own. She lit upon a branch near 

 enough to reach over and drop the thistle- 

 down upon the two eggs. The fact was that 

 she was beginning a new nest, which was to 

 rise above the first. She was burying her own 

 egg together with that of the interloper; and 

 not until she had built a complete new nest 

 above the first one did she lay her clutch of 

 dainty eggs and rear her young. — Craig S. 

 Thoms, VermiUion, S. D. 



Resourceful Cliff Swallows 



It is often said that the Cliff Swallow is 

 unable to construct its nest under the cornice 

 of a building when the wooden surfaces are 

 painted, and no doubt it is true that examples 

 of its nests properly adhering to such surfaces 

 are so infrequent that the rule is in accordance 

 with the general belief. An example of an 

 exception to the rule has been noted by me 

 in Jaffrey, N. H., where three pairs of this 

 species have successfully nested during 1920 

 and 192 1, attaching their nests to smooth, 

 painted surfaces formed by the base of a 

 cornice and the finishing board adjoining. 

 One nest was built in a corner and therefore 

 had three surfaces of attachment, the others 

 being detached nests with only two surfaces 

 of contact. The wood was apparently planed 

 before painting, so that these latter nests 

 were built under conditions of maximum 

 difficulty. 



Sometimes, however, the problems of con- 

 structing a nest under such conditions are 

 solved by a resort to a radical departure in 

 nesting habits. Such a case was observed by 

 me at Meriden, N. H., on July 3, 1921. Here, 

 under the cornice of the gymnasium be- 

 longing to a private school in the village, 

 whose finish was painted wood, two telephone 

 wires incased in tubular insulations entered 

 the building, passing through a board about 

 8 inches below the bottom of the cornice. 

 These wires were horizontal, were placed at 

 the same height, and were about 3 inches 

 apart. During 1920, or earlier, a pair of 

 Robins built a nest on the wires about 4 



